Brown Sugar Angel Food Cake with Italian Meringue Frosting.

Everyone always tells me it's crazy to make my own birthday cake, no one does that, but I've been doing it since I started baking!  I don't see anything crazy about it - I can choose any flavor combination I want and I know it will always be delicious.

 

This year I chose to go all-out girly, pink, fluffy and light with a brown sugar angel food cake frosted with a swirly Italian meringue - not a tablespoon of butter in sight!  Since I tend to go either all light or all decadent, perhaps I'll save the chocolate ganache torte for Valentine's :)

The cake recipe comes from a book my sister gave me for Christmas called Screen Doors and Sweet Tea by Martha Hall Foose and I didn't change anything except omit the almond extract, only because I didn't have any in the house.  If you're an angel food cake fan, try it!  The brown sugar tempers the intense sweetness normal angel food cakes can sometimes have and lends a deeper, more caramel taste.

I knew I wanted a light and fluffy icing I could tint pink for the outside of the cake but all the seven minute frostings I've made end up with a hard crust on the outside after a few hours and since I wanted to make the cake a day ahead of time, I knew I'd need something different.  I also didn't want to make a heavy, greasy pound-of-butter buttercream.  I flipped through many cake books and searched the internet until I realized the cover of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home To Yours has a cake with the exact frosting I was looking for on the cover.

This frosting recipe was a dream!  It wasn't overly sweet, stayed soft and didn't develop a crust.  I tinted it pink but my brain immediately imagines dozens of little cupcakes with this icing swirled high on top in a rainbow of colors for any occasion, sprinkled with adorable confetti and shapes to make them even more festive.

Brown Sugar Angel Food Cake
Adapted from Screen Doors and Sweet Tea
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
14 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and have a tube or angel food cake pan ready.

Sift the flour, brown sugar and salt together onto a piece of waxed paper, removing any large lumps of brown sugar.  In an electric mixer, whip the egg whites on low speed until frothy.  Add the cream of tartar, increase the speed, and whip until the whites hold soft peaks, fold in the vanilla extract.

Transfer the whites to a very large mixing bowl and sift the flour and brown sugar mixture over the egg whites in 3 additions, folding gently after each addition with a large spatula.  Scrape the batter into the tube or angel food cake pan and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, until lightly golden on the outside and it springs back when pressed lightly.  Let the cake cool inverted in the pan completely, then run a thin knife around the outside of the pan and the bottom and carefully remove the cake.

Italian Meringue Frosting
Adapted From Baking: From My Home To Yours
1/2 cup egg whites (about 4 large)
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Food coloring (optional)

Put the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and have a candy thermometer ready.

Place the sugar, cream of tartar and water in a small saucepan and stir to combine.  Bring this mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, then cover the pan and boil for 3 minutes.  Remove the cover and let the syrup boil until it reaches 242 degrees F.  When the syrup is at 235 degrees, begin beating the egg whites on medium speed until they form firm, shiny peaks.  When the syrup is ready and the mixer still running at medium speed, drizzle in the hot syrup between the beaters and the side of the bowl.  Add the vanilla extract (and food coloring, if you like) and keep beating on medium speed until they reach room temperature, about 5 more minutes.  The frosting should be smooth, shiny and marshmallowy.

Perhaps I loved this cake so much because you can eat 2 or 3 slices of it without feeling guilty, and I did! :)

They say you just have to keep whipping...

So I guess I haven't mentioned it before but I'm making my brother's wedding cake. The wedding is this Saturday August 9th. So since the beginning of July I've been stocking up on making batches of frosting and freezing it, baking off cakes and freezing them, practicing on them. (Which is why nothing has been posted here.) But today as I was making batch No. 1,000 of frosting I realized I should be documenting this. If not for me to remember then for the good of the internet people out there also making a wedding cake or something like it.

So part one is buttercream. I have actually made this type of frosting before but not in such quantity so it was a bit nerve wracking. (What isn't for me though?) Anyway the first frosting I made back in May for testing was from Tish Boyle's cake book, but I decided to go with this recipe from Anna Olson (Inn On The Twenty cookbook - great stuff) instead because the quantities were easier to multiply and it was being used on a wedding cake anyway, therefore I knew it would hold up well. This recipe is very looooosely based on hers. I wanted mine sweeter so I upped the sugar a bit and added vanilla, a pinch of salt. Anyway this frosting is amazing and highly recommended. It gets way too butter-like when refrigerated but it's fantastic at room temperature. Or right out of the mixing bowl.

So for step one:
In a small saucepan measure out 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar. Stir a bit to dissolve the sugar in the water and start to cook it on high. You want this to eventually become very syrupy and to reach 240 degrees F.



Step two:
In the bowl of a stand mixer, place 8 egg whites, a pinch of salt and 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. Whip until soft peaks form, then add 1 cup of sugar until stiff peaks form.



Step three:
Once the syrup has reached 240 degrees F, drizzle it slowly into the egg whites while the mixer is going at medium speed. Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract and whip for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the mixture has cooled down.



Step four:
This part is pretty insane - start adding 6 sticks of room temperature butter, I like to go one stick at a time until it's incorporated. Then comes the scariest part of all... it will look as if you've ruined the frosting most likely. It will be liquidy and not like frosting at all. But you HAVE to keep whipping it. It will come together eventually. The butter will solidify once again and it will be fluffy like a buttercream.



Voila. I think this might be awesome used on cupcakes also. Spreading it is pretty easy and it doesn't have a tendency to get too many air bubbles involved.

Basic Gluten-Free Baking.

My brother's fiance is a Celiac. Meaning she can't have anything with wheat in it. That means no cakes, cookies, muffins, waffles, pasta, anything with wheat in it. Whatsoever.

As long as they have been dating, I've used this opportunity to do some gluten-free baking. It's not as hard as it might seem. Mostly I stick to naturally flourless things, such as meringues, flourless chocolate cakes and cookies, though sometimes I do venture into various flours and substitutes (chickpea flour, almond flour, tapioca starch, xanthan gum). When I heard they were coming for dinner the other day, I immediately though of a pavlova. They remind me of spring and summertime and we all need some of that here right now.

I was introduced to the pavlova by one of my favourite cookbook authors Nigella Lawson. This is a variation on her recipe from Feast.



Pavlova recipe adapted from Feast by Nigella Lawson

Meringue base:
8 large egg whites
Pinch salt
2 1/2 cups superfine granulated sugar
4 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon Amaretto (I use this in place of vanilla extract in everything gluten-free that I make)

Whipped cream topping:
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar

Fruits of your choice (I used blueberries, raspberries and blackberries!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. Then add the sugar a few tablespoons at a time until it's all incorporated and stiff peaks are formed. Fold in the cornstarch, vinegar and Amaretto (or extract) and then pour this onto the parchment-lined baking sheet, forming about a 10-inch circle in diameter, smoothing out the top. Put this in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 300 degrees F, then bake for an hour to an hour and a half, or until there are cracks around the rim. Then turn the oven off, open the door and let it cool completely.

You can try to take this off the parchment and put it on a platter, but I find it easier to take a platter, and then INVERT the pavlova onto it, and then peel off the parchment. Meaning the bottom of the meringue is then the top, where the cream will go.

When the pavlova is completely cooled, whip the cream and sugar until soft peaks form, and dollop generously over the meringue. Then scatter the fruit (or pile, in my case) all over the cream. This is a messy dessert, but it's SO delicious and fun to eat. Great show stopper also, if you're looking to impress someone special ;)